


Seen And Not Heard

by Nevanna



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Blind Eye Society, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Memory Alteration, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 19:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16939326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: Pacifica discovers one more secret that her parents have been keeping.





	Seen And Not Heard

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for the "amnesia" prompt in Round 9 of Hurt/Comfort Bingo. It is a companion piece to [Seeing It Through](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10391640), though I think it's possible to understand what's going on in this story without reading that one.

**10.**

Pacifica pretends that her hands aren’t trembling as she reaches for the key to the apartment. Her parents are still awake, watching an infomercial for voice-activated clothing storage. “You’re late,” her father informs her.

“Dear, I’m sure that she was just out with friends and lost track of time,” her mother says gently.

“Something like that,” Pacifica agrees. The idea that Candy and Grenda - not to mention the local eccentric hillbilly - might be her _friends_ doesn’t horrify her as much as it used to.

Father stands up and tries to look imposing. “Our station in life might have changed, thanks to the recent _unpleasantness_ in this town…”

“Never mind all that!” Mother interrupts pointedly.

“...but we still expect you to follow our rules, if you ever want us to amount to anything again. Don’t _forget_ that your behavior reflects upon us.” Pacifica can’t keep the laughter in. “What did I say? Are you making light of your actions or their consequences?”

“You told me not to _forget_.” She finds a pen on the coffee table, grabs the envelope from the letter that officially cancelled her parents’ country club membership, and sketches the eye that’s been watching over her dreams for almost a year. When drawing the X through the center, she almost rips through the paper. “Does _this_ symbol mean anything to you?”

**9.**

Less than two hours earlier, Mr. McGucket’s newest invention spoke up cheerfully to tell him and the three girls that their tea was ready. Pacifica breathed in the steam from her cup and waited for her thoughts to settle. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell them what I know,” she said. “Or show them the recording.” They’d found that recording, taken eight months ago, among piles of extracted memories in a cavern underneath the local History Museum.

Candy took a sip from her own cup. “Why not?” 

“If my dad doesn’t know what he did when he was part of the Blind Eye, and there’s no way for him to do it again…” The words sounded hollow in her ears. She’d spent her whole life making excuses for her parents… and for herself.

“But he still has other lots of ways to be the worst,” Grenda said. “Just ’cause _you’re_ not as horrible as you used to be…”

“Hey!” Pacifica protested weakly, even though she couldn’t really argue.

“…It still doesn’t mean _they’ll_ turn into better people,” Candy finished.

“It ain’t never too late to make a change for the better,” McGucket remarked. “But I couldn’t of done it if some folks didn’t show me the truth about who I am and what I done. Then I could make a choice, same like we all gotta do.” He raised the brim of his hat to look her in the eye. “You ain’t alone in this.”

For the first time, his hand on hers didn’t fill her with disgust, and when Candy touched her arm, Pacifica didn’t pull away.

**8.**

The day before, McGucket waved Candy and Grenda inside with a “Y’all are right on time!” He blinked at Pacifica. “You done got what you came for last time, didn’t you?”

“I thought I did,” Pacifica said truthfully.

“Well, the more, the merrier, I s’pose!” The dining room table was covered with blueprints that McGucket told them were for “flying rocket boots.” He pulled a pencil out of his beard and added an equation to the margins. “That should give’em an extra kick. I done come up with that idea during this morning’s hootenanny!”

“Mr. McGucket, before we work on the boots,” Candy spoke up, “we were wondering if you could tell Pacifica about the Society of the Blind Eye.” The pencil snapped in McGucket’s hand. “You don’t have to, if it upsets you too much,” Candy added.

“Naw, I gotta take responsi-mobility,” McGucket said. “Pull up some chairs. Unless you rather sit on the table. I don’t judge.”

All three girls opted for chairs.

“Round about thirty years ago,” McGucket began, “I invented a machine that could erase memories. I started off thinking to only use it on myself, but I guess I liked forgetting so much that I thought it was best for everybody. I gathered me a little group...” He pointed to Pacifica’s notebook. “That there’s our symbol.”

Candy nodded. “That’s what Mabel told us.”

“We thought it was best for the whole town to forget whenever they saw something what weren’t quite of this world.”

“Like zombies,” Grenda supplied.

“Body-switching carpets,” Candy jumped in.

“Sexy Summerween Tricksters!” Grenda declared, and the others stared at her. “Wait, was I the only one who was into him?”

“Dipper and Mabel ran into a different freaky thing, like, every other day,” Pacifica pointed out. “How come they always remembered it afterward?” 

McGucket shrugged. “Dunno. When those two came to town, I’d been out of the Society for a good long while – didn’t even remember that I was ever _in_. Could be, they thought the young’uns would bounce back easier, or maybe that nobody’d believe’em.”

Pacifica thought back to some of her parents’ punishments, and found herself nodding.

“Lookin’ at you, girl, I’m thinking they must have made some exceptions.”

Pacifica turned up her nose. “Well, I always _did_ consider myself exceptional.”

“Is she joking?” Grenda muttered, and Candy shrugged in response.

“The thing about erased memories is that they don’t never disappear all the way,” McGucket continued. “They can still scare us, or even hurt us, even if we don’t really know why.”

“Can I get them back?”

He nodded. “We can try, if that’s what you really want. You gotta be ready for what you might find.”

“I got through the end of the world in a dress made out of burlap,” Pacifica reminded him. 

McGucket grinned. “How’re you feeling about breaking into a town institution?”

**7.**

Earlier that day, Pacifica’s eyes were starting to glaze over as she scrolled through the microfilm archive at the public library, until she heard Candy gasp behind her.

The Northwests had made “donations” to both the library and the history museum, in exchange for their help in making sure that certain stories stayed in place over the years. Pacifica didn’t know what all of those stories covered up, but she guessed that the image on the screen haunted more than a few nightmares in Gravity Falls: a single eye surrounded by a triangle, painted on a hardwood floor. The background looked a lot like her father’s study… she thought. She wasn’t supposed to go in there. Nothing good happened when she did. 

The headline read, “DEMON WORSHIP?”

“Pacifica?” Candy peered over her shoulder. “Do you know something about that?”

Pacifica was suddenly very cold. Her surroundings wavered, as if the room was lit by candles that threw their light over the walls. 

“My memory is clear thanks to the Society of the Blind Eye,” said a voice, and it took Pacifica a full minute to realize that the voice was hers.

**6.**

A week before, Pacifica sat at a table in a different library, staring at a blank page in her notebook while her friends’ conversation rose and fell across from her.

“…so Mother’s personal shopper told me that she wouldn’t be able to get a sample from next spring’s line.”

“No. Way. What are you going to do?”

After ghosts crashed the annual Northwest party, Rhapsody and McNamara left for their own vacation without telling her. They hadn’t even been back in town for a full day before reality turned inside out. The next time Pacifica saw either of them, they were stumbling into the Mystery Shack, their perfect summer clothes in filthy tatters. 

“Pacifica? What do you think?”

She looked up. “Huh? About what?”

“Um, about where we should _shop_?” McNamara spoke slowly, enunciating each word. “For the _dance_? I like Fancy Frocks, but Rhapsody thinks that place is over. So, who’s right?” Their faces turned toward her eagerly. 

Pacifica used to enjoy making them compete for her approval, and the tears and icy silences that usually followed, but her parents’ latest fight about how to “restore glory to the family name” had kept her awake the night before, and she didn’t have the energy for that particular game today. “Just do whatever you want.”

“Well, whatever we wear, we’ll probably look better than the visitors from Planet Loser,” Rhapsody declared, jerking her head toward the next table, where Candy and Grenda bent their heads over a three-ring binder.

“Come on, they’re not that bad,” Pacifica argued. Her friends stared at her like she’d just… well, like she’d just grown a pair of ears in the middle of her face. “They, like, totally came through for us when the whole town was…”

“Like, never _mind_ all that!” Rhapsody says quickly, as if a teacher was about to swoop down on them.

Pacifica hadn’t even been back at school for a week, and even if she let most things slide off her, she was already tired of hearing those words. When she pushed her chair back and stood up, she could still hear the other girls whispering to each other, loudly enough that she was probably meant to hear (she knew how to pitch her “whispers” to make sure everybody heard them who needed to):

“What’s _wrong_ with her?”

“Maybe Daddy told her she could only have one pony.”

That was actually true, but it wasn’t why Pacifica turned her back on them.

When she sat down at the next table over, she only hoped that Rhapsody and McNamara would be devastated by the idea that, given the choice, she’d rather sit with the kids they used to sneer at than with them. She stared down at her notebook again and pretended that she didn’t hear Grenda ask, “Should we tell her to go away?”

“Mabel wouldn’t,” Candy whispered back, and Pacifica had to admit that she was right.

She’d started drawing absently on an empty page – a flower here and a fancy hat there – and didn’t even realize what was taking shape under her pen until she’d slashed an X through the center of the eye. Suddenly something was restraining her arms and legs, and one word echoed through the shadows that fell over her surroundings: “ _Unseen_!”

She didn’t even realize that she’d tossed the notebook to the floor. When her vision cleared, everybody in the library was staring at her. “Excuse me, what’s your _problem_?” she snapped.

Candy’s eyes were very wide behind her glasses. “Are you all right?”

Pacifica gave a little laugh. “Sure. I thought I’d, like, chipped a nail. But everything’s okay.” She turned her hands this way and that. “See?” The other two girls rolled their eyes at each other, sending a silent message – _typical Pacifica_ – the way that only best friends could. To change the subject, she asked, “Are you working on an assignment?”

“You can’t copy off us!” Grenda said quickly, making a grab for their binder.

“We’re looking into some local history,” Candy explained, a little bit more patiently.

“Local _weird_ history,” Grenda added. “Since Dipper and Mabel and their uncles left town, it’s kind of been up to us.”

“Maybe I can help,” Pacifica offered. “I mean, my family’s told me a lot about this town and its past.” They probably thought that she was trying to buy their friendship, and maybe they were right.

“What’s in it for you?” Grenda asked.

The sight of the crossed-out eye didn’t send Pacifica into another embarrassing fit of hysteria, but it still made her uneasy. “Maybe I want to find out how much of it is true.”

**5.**

Pacifica bought the cake at the bakery the day that it reopened. Two years ago, Rhapsody suggested that they try to _make_ something for the school bake sale instead of leaving it to the kitchen help. Their experiment had ended with batter covering every surface and caked in their hair as they giggled hysterically, until the sound of her father’s bell from the entrance to the kitchen silenced their laughter and froze Pacifica on the spot. She’d been unable to hear anything else.

Her grip on the bag tightened as she climbed the hill to her old house. 

The first thing she noticed was that the main gate was wide open. She imagined her mother recoiling at the thought of just _anybody_ walking in off the street, and smiled as she rang the doorbell. 

She wasn’t quite sure what to expect when Fiddleford McGucket answered, but his wide grin still surprised her. “Looks like I got me a visitor!”

“Hello there,” Pacifica said, pouring every drop of her etiquette tutoring into her smile. “I hope you’re settling into your new home, and that you’ll accept…” A housewarming gift? A peace offering? “I heard you liked coconut,” she said instead. Or at least he had thirty years ago, according to Mabel’s great-uncle Ford.

“Well, I can’t rightly say whether I do or not,” McGucket said cheerfully. “Guess I’ll have to give it a taste and find out! But that sure was thoughtful of you.” He peered closer. “Say, you’re that little rich girl what used to live here, ain’t you?”

“We’re not really _that_ rich,” Pacifica admitted. “Not anymore. But when we were, this was our house.” They’d rented an apartment while her parents looked into finding a new place to live. Part of her hopes that they’ll move out of Gravity Falls, even if she can’t always imagine settling down anywhere else.

“I still got some of your things upstairs what I don’t know what to do with. Might see what I can invent from them, if it turns out like you don’t want to take them with you.”

“I’ll take a look,” Pacifica agreed. “Thanks.”

McGucket had removed many of the pictures of Northwest ancestors, and taken down the tapestry that always scared her a little bit, even before she recognized the one-eyed triangle that floated near the top edge. When her father tried to join Bill Cipher on the first of those horrible few days, the first thing she thought was _I should have known_ , before Bill turned Father’s face into _that_ and she was too horrified to think anything at all.

She passed the room that used to hide her ancestors’ crimes, tiptoed through the hallways where a vengeful ghost once chased her, and held her breath as she approached the closed door to her father’s study. 

Even when he wasn’t home, she wasn’t supposed to go in there. 

Something very bad would happen if she did.

**4.**

When her eyes opened, she didn’t remember closing them. She was lying in the backseat of her parents’ car, her father beside her, but she wasn’t sure how she got there. He stroked her hair and said something about a sudden illness during a dinner with some of his friends.

She believed him. She trusted him. But every time she reached for that memory, afterward, that single eye burned within her mind, sometimes with an X slashed viciously across it, and she slammed shut that door in her mind.

**3.**

“Who is the subject of our meeting?”

“This child!”

“Pacifica, what is it that you wish to unsee?”

**2.**

She didn’t remember hearing voices from downstairs: “ _Really_ , Preston? Creatures like that always have an agenda.”

“So do I, dearest,” her father said. “I’m a businessman, and I know how to negotiate. Or, at least, I would have, if our daughter hadn’t interrupted the ritual.”

“Well, I think it’s better for all of us that it didn’t work,” her mother insisted. “If you try something like that again, I’ll…”

“You’ll _what_ , exactly?”

“I’ll invite my mother to stay for a week. I know how much you love her company, and since you’ve insisted on playing around with your father’s crackpot superstitions, it’s the least I can do.”

After a long silence, Father said, “Priscilla, my crumpet, I’ve some friends popping by in just a tick. Would you mind occupying yourself elsewhere while they’re here? Go and work on one of your little flower arrangements in the north dining room. Thanks ever so much; off you go now.”

The silence stretched on, and then Pacifica heard footsteps in the hallway outside her room. She closed the door tightly, sat on her bed, folded her hands, and tried to put on the apologetic expression that usually worked on her parents when she was trying to avoid being grounded.

Her father knocked, which was unusual. He sounded apologetic, which was more unusual, and uncertain, which was almost unimaginable, as he paced back and forth across her pink floral rug. “I don’t know what you must think of me, after seeing that,” he said. “But I wanted… _look_ at me, sweetheart.” She did. “Don’t you believe that I’ve always wanted what’s best for our family?”

Too late, Pacifica realized that he was glancing at something over her head.

Too late, she heard the door open behind her, felt a strong hand on her shoulder, and the world went dark.

**1.**

Not long before that, her father loomed in the doorway, blocking her view of the one-eyed triangle chalked on the floor of his study. The candlelight still glowed and flickered behind him.

“What were you doing?” Pacifica demanded.

“Go to your room!” Father reached into his pocket for the bell, and Pacifica braced herself. “This doesn’t concern you.”

The ringing of the bell sounded like _obey_ , sounded like _be a good girl_ , sounded like _know your place_. Pacifica shook her head to dislodge its grip. “No,” she said through clenched teeth. “I know what I saw.”


End file.
